Terra
by Mirrankei
Summary: Terra spends the night in a quiet town, and is confronted by a stranger. Slight xover with Final Fantasy. Spoiler-free!


It was starting to get late. The sun was going down, and the sky was just starting to take on an orange hue.

There'd been no sign of any of the people he was looking for. No reports of masked boys, no Master, no Ven or Aqua trailing after him; no stolen hearts or even unversed. It was becoming apparent that Terra had gone completely off track. This world obviously had no need for a keybearer at all.

What the world did have was a pleasant little locomotive track running around the city. It had ads for concerts and tournaments plastered on the walls and an ice cream shop that gave him a free scoop for trying one of the experimental new flavors. It had an elementary school where a boy with a bandage across his nose sneered and laughed at his clothes and a little girl who just pointed at him and said "WEIRDO."

Terra looked at the sunset from his seat on the hill. The view was gorgeous. The whole little city reminded him of his own home, before he'd been sent to live at the training center with Master Eraqus.

He had to go. This world was peaceful and safe. Staying here might draw the attention of the unversed, and he didn't want the little town to be ruined by his carelessness.

But it was getting late, and Terra had been on his feet all day.

He looked up at the sky.

"Sorry guys," he said. "I'm gonna stay here for tonight."

He took the last train across town to the shopping district, where he'd spotted an inn earlier in the day. Opening the door, he was surprised to find the man from the ice cream store behind the counter, chatting amiably with a man standing on the other side. He looked up at the sound of the bell over the door, and waved at Terra cheerfully.

"Hey, if it isn't my favorite new customer!" he said.

Terra stepped up to the counter. "Hello again," he said.

"I'm all out of ice cream right now, but I bet I could wrangle you up a room if ya need one!"

"Thank you," Terra said. "That would be great."

The innkeeper muddled around under his desk for the check-in papers. "So are you an innkeeper who runs an ice cream shop, or an ice cream man who works at an inn?" Terra asked.

"Oh, the first," he said cheerfully. "We don't get too many visitors around here. Just folks from across town who don't feel like walking back. So I got plenty of time to pursue my ice cream hobby. The kids love it. Someday I'm gonna invent a flavor that'll be famous all over the world! Ah, here we are."

He pulled some papers up from under the desk and straightened them. "Alright, it's going to be 200 munny for one night for one person. Is it just you?"

"Just me."

"Alright then, and can I get your name?"

"Terra."

"Terra... there we go, just give me a minute to get your key ready."

As the innkeeper fiddled around with his wall of keys, his friend looked pensive.

"Terra, huh? Y'know that name sounds so familiar..."

Terra blinked at him. "It does?"

"Yeah, I could swear I heard someone mention it before. Not sure where, though."

"You know, I think you're right," the innkeeper said. "Wasn't it that kid who moved here a few months back?"

"Oh yeah, that Setzer kid!" He turned back to Terra. "When he first got here, he kept asking about someone named Terra. You know him?"

"I don't think so," Terra said, baffled. "It doesn't ring any bells."

"Well, he was definitely asking about you." The innkeeper handed him his key. "Second floor, third door on the left."

"Thank you," Terra said.

The innkeeper's friend walked to the door and grabbed his jacket off the hat rack. "Y'know, I pass by Setzer's place on the way back. You want I should tell him you're here?"

"Well, sure, I guess." Terra scratched his head. "But I'm pretty sure I don't know who that is."

"Well, it was a few months back he mentioned it, but I'll let him know just in case." He grabbed his hat and opened the door. "See ya around!"

It was two hours later when Terra heard the footsteps. In that time, he'd taken off his armor, done his nightly push ups and sit ups, and taken a refreshing shower. Not quite tired enough to go to sleep, he sat on the bed reading one of the books that had been left in the drawer in his room.

There was the soft jingle of the bell from downstairs, and then thunder as someone ran up the stairs and thumped down the hallway. Terra's door burst open with a bang, and a young man stumbled in.

Leaning on the doorjamb was a boy not much older than Terra. His long, white hair was in complete disarray, and his large, black, fur-trimmed coat was barely hanging on one shoulder. His pale face had a scar over its right eye, but besides looking flushed and out of breath, it had the look of the most intense happiness and relief Terra had ever seen in his life.

Within a second, his expression changed to one of complete disdain.

"You're not Terra," he said.

"Yes I am," said Terra.

"No," the stranger said accusingly. "You're not."

The young man sighed and straightened up. "I should have known it was too good to be true," he said, smoothing out his hair and adjusting the cravat around his neck. "But who can blame me? I hear her name, and can only expect to find the lovely young maiden I've been searching for."

He glared at Terra again. "It must be quite emasculating for a man such as yourself to have such a feminine name. Very misleading."

Terra glanced at the boy's white high-heeled boots, and then at the purple lipstick he wore. "I can't help my name," he said.

"No, I suppose not." He flopped down on Terra's chair, uninvited.

Terra stood in the awkward silence, watching the intruder sit with his eyes closed as if he were in his own living room.

"Well," he finally said, "If there's nothing else... this is my room, and-"

The boy cracked his scarred eye open and glared again. "I just sprinted halfway across town, only to be met with bitter disappointment. I think I am entitled to catch my breath."

Terra shut his eyes and took a deep breath. This was hardly anything worth getting upset over. The rudeness of the stranger was unpleasant, but he was hardly a servant of Darkness, and he was bound to leave soon...

"Well," the young man said, and when Terra opened his eyes, he was smiling at him, with only a hint of bitterness in his eyes. "Let's start over then, shall we?"

He stood up and held out his hand. "Setzer Gabbiani, pleasure to meet you."

Terra grabbed the offered hand cautiously. "...Terra."

"Just Terra?"

"Yeah."

He shrugged. "Well there you go then. I'm looking for a Miss Terra Branford. Hardly the same." He stepped back and looked the keybearer over. "You're from another world, aren't you?"

Terra hesitated, but his Master had never said anything about lying to conceal the existence of other worlds. "Yeah, I am."

"Hm," Setzer said, and that was the end of that. Instead, he reached into his pocket. "Well, I don't fancy running all the way back home this late, so perhaps my time won't have been wasted entirely if I get a new friend out of it."

He pulled his hand back out. In it was a deck of cards.

"Fancy a game?"

In the morning, Terra said goodbye to the innkeeper, walked back up the hill on the other side of town, and opened a portal back to between worlds.

His pockets were considerably lighter: Setzer had stayed for most of the night, and while Terra wasn't terrible at cards, his visitor was something else entirely. He'd been rather prententious and stuck up, but Terra found himself warming up to his self-proclaimed friend quickly. They talked for hours, playing cards, but only about inconsequential things, never the other worlds or the other "Terra" that he was looking for.

The only mention of the topic was when Setzer finally left, proclaiming that a walk through the underpass in the night air would do him good.

"If you happen to meet a lovely lady sharing your name during your travels, send her my way, will you?" He'd then sighed, and added to himself, "Or Locke, or Celes, or Edgar..." And with a shake of his head and a vague wave goodbye, the gambler left.

Terra gazed absently at the faraway worlds passing by. Setzer was obviously not from Twilight Town. Could his missing friends be somewhere out there, looking for him? Terra had never been stuck on one world, the way his new friend was. He wondered how he'd feel, if he were left on a strange world, and would never see Ven or Aqua or Master Eraqus again.

Then his thoughts returned to their original position, and he accelerated in sheer annoyance, crashing into the head of a passing unversed and knocking it back into the darkness it came from.

He flipped himself upside down angrily, and shouted at nobody in particular, "It's NOT a girl's name!"


End file.
